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Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Two-minute review
I have been begging Apple to release a purple MacBook for a few years now and have been repeatedly disappointed year after year, so when I found out that the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch was going to sport a pastel purple colorway, it really was Microsoft‘s game to lose in my eyes.
And while it doesn’t quite come close enough to dethroning the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch, performance-wise, it’s a very solid everyday laptop that looks undeniably superior to Apple‘s rather boring MacBook Air design, which has stayed the same over the past couple of years.
The Surface Laptop 13-inch starts at $899.99 / £1,099 / AU$1,699 on Microsoft’s website, which is roughly the same price as the MacBook Air 13-inch (which starts at $999 / £999 / AU$1,699), but its performance, at times, is substantially slower than Apple’s best laptop, making it an iffy value proposition for those who could go either way as far as operating systems go.
Had the Surface Laptop 13-inch shipped with an Intel Lunar Lake chip rather than the underpowered Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core SoC, this would be an entirely different review, as I’d be giving this laptop six-out-of-five stars, because in just about every other way than its performance and minor compatibility issues, this is the best ultrabook I’ve ever put my hands on.
Aesthetically, it’s an upgrade over its larger Surface Laptop 7 sibling that launched last year, with a tighter form factor that is exceptionally lightweight and sleek. Its 3:2 display offers plenty of real estate for a laptop this small, and its keyboard and trackpad are a dream to use.
Best of all, it comes in purple (technically ‘Violet’), though you will pay slightly more for this color option than the base platinum colorway, as it’s only available on the higher capacity configuration.
Meanwhile, the Arm-based Snapdragon X Plus is an incredibly efficient chip, getting just over 17 hours of battery life on a single charge in my testing, which easily translates into two full workdays or more without recharging, outlasting even the latest MacBook Air 13-inch models.
If all you’re looking for is a gorgeous-looking laptop that is great for everyday computing tasks, school work, and general productivity—while liberating you from having to keep a constant eye out for power outlets to recharge day after day—then the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch is one of the best Windows laptops you can buy, and one of the best student laptops as well, especially if you get a student discount. It just isn’t the knockout blow against the MacBook Air that Windows fans might be hoping for.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Price & availability
- How much does it cost? Starts at $899.99 / £1,039 / AU$1,699
- When is it available? It’s available now
- Where can you get it? You can buy it in the US, UK, and Australia
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch is available now, starting at $899.99 / £899 / AU$1,699 directly from Microsoft or at retail partners. It comes in slightly cheaper than the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 in the US and UK, (starting at $1,099.99 and £1,039, respectively). In Australia, however, the larger Surface Laptop 7 13.8-inch starts out cheaper at AU$1,597 (and it comes with more powerful hardware to boot).
The Surface Laptop 7 13.8-inch also features a more powerful Qualcomm chip, a sharper screen, and better port support (though no Violet colorway, you’ll have to settle for the equally gorgeous Sapphire option).
Similarly, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is also slightly cheaper than the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 in the US (starting at $999), while being slightly more expensive in the UK (the base MacBook Air 13-inch start at £999), while there’s no difference in starting price between the two in Australia.
Compare this, however, with a similar memory-and-storage-specced Dell 14 Plus, starting at $799.99 / £999 / AU$1,298, but which comes with more powerful x86 processors from AMD and Intel, meaning that you get better performance without any compatibility worries that come with Arm-based chips.
Granted, none of these competing laptops look anywhere near as good as the Surface Laptop 13-inch, but if your main interest is performance, there are cheaper options that will get you what you want.
All that said, however, this is the best-looking laptop you’re going to find at this price, in my opinion, and yes, that includes the entire MacBook lineup. If you want to look good at a cafe while reading emails, or streaming Netflix in an airport lounge while waiting for a flight, this laptop will turn heads (at least in Violet) without totally breaking the bank.
The only real knock I can point to is that the long-term value of the Surface Laptop 13-inch is lower than a MacBook Air 13-inch with M4. The latter is much more performant, and it will stay ‘current’ for a few years longer than the Surface Laptop 13-inch, in all likelihood.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Specs
- Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core SoC
- 16GB LPDDR5x
- The display could be better
There isn’t a whole lot of variation in terms of spec configurations for the Surface Laptop 13-inch, with the biggest difference being some extra storage and two additional colorway options.
|
Price: |
$899.99 at Microsoft.com | £899 at Microsoft.com| AU$1,699 at Microsoft.com |
|
Colorways: |
Platinum |
|
CPU: |
Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core |
|
GPU: |
Qualcomm Adreno X1-45 |
|
Memory: |
16GB LPDDR5X-4300 |
|
Storage: |
256GB SSD |
|
Screen: |
13-inch, 3:2, 1920x1280p 60Hz, 400-nit, Touch PixelSense |
|
Ports: |
2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 w/ DP and Power Delivery, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1 x combo jack |
|
Battery (WHr): |
50WHr |
|
Wireless: |
WiFi 7, BT 5.4 |
|
Camera: |
1080p |
|
Weight: |
2.7 lbs (1.22 kg) |
|
Dimensions: |
11.25 x 8.43 x 0.61 ins | (285.65 x 214.14 x 15.6mm) |
For $100 / £100 / AU$200 more, you can upgrade the storage on the Surface Laptop 13-inch to 512GB and get additional Violet and Ocean colorway options, but otherwise the more expensive configuration (which I tested out for this review) is identical to the base configuration.
|
Price: |
$999.99 at Microsoft.com | £999 at Microsoft.com| AU$1,899 at Microsoft.com |
|
Colorways: |
Platinum, Violet, Ocean |
|
CPU: |
Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core |
|
GPU: |
Qualcomm Adreno X1-45 |
|
Memory: |
16GB LPDDR5X-4300 |
|
Storage: |
512GB SSD |
|
Screen: |
13-inch, 3:2, 1920x1280p 60Hz, 400-nit, Touch PixelSense display |
|
Ports: |
2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 w/ DP and Power Delivery, 1 x USB Type-A 3.1, 1 x 3.5mm combo jack |
|
Battery (WHr): |
50WHr |
|
Wireless: |
WiFi 7, BT 5.4 |
|
Camera: |
1080p |
|
Weight: |
2.7 lbs (1.22 kg) |
|
Dimensions: |
11.25 x 8.43 x 0.61 ins | (285.65 x 214.14 x 15.6mm) |
There’s no option to upgrade the memory or storage on any of these models beyond the configuration options at the time of purchase, which does make the longevity of the Surface Laptop 13-inch’s specs more limited than laptops like the Dell 14 Plus, where you can at least upgrade the storage if you’d like.
And while the specs on the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 might not be upgradable either, they are simply better overall for a relatively small increase in price, meaning the long-term value of the MacBook Air 13-inch (M4) is superior overall.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Design
- Beautiful color options and fantastic aesthetics
- Light and portable
- Display resolution is only 1280p with no HDR
The design of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch is simply stunning. There’s no other way to describe it.
Starting with the exterior aesthetics, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is as close to a MacBook Air for Windows as you’re going to find on the market, and in my opinion, it’s even better looking thanks to the additional Violet and Ocean colorways alongside the default Platinum look of the base model.
You pay extra for the splash of color, but it’s a worthwhile investment. The machined aluminum finish of the laptop chassis, along with the pastel-ish hue of the chassis and the darker, more matte color of the keycaps and trackpad, really help make this laptop stand out.
The display on the Surface Laptop 13-inch is a step down from the larger 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 from 2024, which had a maximum resolution of 2304 x 1536 (a PPI of 201, compared to the 1920×1280 Surface Laptop 13-inch’s 178 PPI) and 120Hz refresh compared to just 60Hz for the Surface Laptop 13-inch.
It also has a lower contrast ratio of 1,000:1 compared to the larger version’s 1,400:1. The Surface Laptop 7’s display is also made of Corning Gorilla Glass 5. In contrast, the Surface Laptop 13-inch’s display is only “Strengthened glass” according to Microsoft’s official spec sheet for the Surface Laptop lineup.
The display does max out at 400-nits, though, which is nice and bright enough for most people and situations, but you might struggle to see the screen properly if you’re using the laptop outside on a bright sunny day.
I found that carrying the Surface Laptop 13-inch around was very easy, as it fitted in pretty much any laptop bag and was thin and compact enough that I was able to use it sitting in an airplane seat during my 15-hour flight to Computex 2025 with almost no issue.
Speaking of using the laptop, the key switches are quiet and have good travel and responsiveness, and everything is well-spaced, so you don’t feel cramped despite the laptop’s smaller size.
The trackpad is likewise responsive and smooth, making navigation and clicking around the desktop a breeze.
One thing that’s not that great is the port selection, which is limited to two USB-C Gen 3.2 ports, a USB-A Gen 3.1 port, and a 3.5mm jack for a headset.
It’d have been nice to get some USB4 ports in there like you get with the larger Surface Laptop 7 models, but both USB-C ports do support power delivery and DP 1.4 output (though if you’re trying to connect to more than one monitor, you need one port per monitor, rather than being able to daisy-chain them to just a single port).
The webcam, meanwhile, is a 1080p Surface Studio Camera that is crisp enough, but unlike the larger Surface Laptop models from last year, it does not support Windows Hello authentication, and it doesn’t have a physical privacy shutter, which in 2025 should be pretty much mandatory, so along with the port and display downgrades, I’ve got to ding what is otherwise a nearly perfect design.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Performance
- A performance downgrade from last year’s Surface Laptop
- Some compatibility issues with ARM architecture still linger
- Gaming is functionally a no-go
What holds the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch from really being the fierce MacBook Air competitor that many of us hoped it would be is the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus SoC.
When I reviewed the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 last year, I was genuinely impressed by the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite chip, despite the compatibility challenges that Windows-on-Arm is still working through. That was a much more powerful chip, though, and even the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus SoC offers noticeably better performance than what the Surface Laptop 13-inch is packing.
The 8-core chip isn’t awful, to be clear. It’s perfectly good for general computing tasks like streaming, school work, and office productivity, and it’s probably one of the best student laptops out there for those who want a little bit of style to go along with their studies.
But if you need this laptop to do anything other than writing up papers and reports, streaming movies, or using web-based cloud software, you will likely be unhappy with what you’re getting here for the price.
The most direct and obvious comparisons I can make with this laptop is the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch with Apple Silicon (starting with the Apple M2), the larger 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7, the recently released Dell 14 Plus, last year’s Dell XPS 13 (with both Intel and Qualcomm SoCs), and the Asus Zenbook A14 with the entry-level Snapdragon X SoC.
Only the M2 MacBook Air 13-inch and Dell 14 Plus are cheaper than the Surface Laptop 13-inch (at least at the time of review), and all of these laptops start around the same price, give or take a hundred bucks or so.
The models I’ve tested and that TechRadar has reviewed in the past vary by spec, so it’s not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison laid out in the charts above, as some of the Dell and Apple notebooks’ advantages can be easily chalked up to more expensive processors.
If you go with any of those systems at the same price as the Surface Laptop 13-inch I tested, the performance difference might not be nearly as dramatic on paper, and almost certainly won’t be all that noticeable.
Still, it’s pretty clear that the Surface Laptop 13-inch either lands somewhere in the middle of its competition, or comes in second or third from the bottom. Add to that some performance issues stemming from Microsoft’s Prism software layer that translates x86-architecture-designed programs, which is pretty much every Windows program, to be Arm-compatible.
Generally, this works rather well, but it does introduce system overhead that will slow things down. In short, unless you’re running a piece of rare Arm-native software, you will almost never get as good an experience with Windows software on Arm as you would with the x86 architecture powering Intel and AMD chips.
The question comes down to whether or not the performance is good enough, and I think that for most people, it will be (unless you want to load up Steam and get into PC gaming. The best gaming laptop, this is not).
Much like the MacBook Air 13-inch, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is more geared toward casual computing needs and productivity work, and it excels at these tasks.
So, even though the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 gets roughly twice as many frames per second as the Surface Laptop 13-inch, the MacBook Air 13-inch still struggles to maintain playable frame rates unless you seriously scale back your graphics settings.
The MacBook’s gaming advantage, then, only really looks intimidating as a percentage, but in practice, none of the laptops I tested were suitable for the task of playing, say, Cyberpunk 2077 at max settings and native resolution.
What it really boils down to, then, is whether you’re just looking for a new laptop to keep up with friends and family, maybe do some office work, or write that Sci-Fi novel at the local coffee shop that you’ve been meaning to finally get around to this year.
If those are the boxes that need ticking, any of the laptops listed above will get the job done, but none will look as good as the Violet Surface Laptop 13-inch.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Battery Life
- How long does it last on a single charge? 17 hours and 14 minutes
- How long to recharge from empty to full? With the included 45W charger, it takes about two and a half hours to charge to full.
One other key area where the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch shines is its stellar battery life. In my testing, it ran about 17 hours and 14 minutes on average in my battery test, thanks to the super-efficient Arm architecture. This puts it in fourth place overall in my top 10 laptop test group, but it does outlast all three MacBook Air 13-inch models in the group by an hour or more.
So even though it’s not officially in the battery life winner’s circle, you can’t ask for much more from a laptop this thin and light.
Should you buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch?
|
Category |
Notes |
Rating |
|---|---|---|
|
Value |
While not as cheap as something like the Dell 14 Plus, it is on par or cheaper than similar offerings from Dell and Apple. |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Specs |
There aren’t a whole lot of configuration options, and the lack of USB4 is unfortunate. |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Design |
It’s simply gorgeous and a joy to type on. If it had a physical camera privacy shutter, better ports, and a better display, it’d be a 6 out of 5. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Performance |
For a casual use notebook, it’s in line with similarly specced Windows laptops, but the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 runs circles around it. |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Battery Life |
At just over 17 hours of battery life in my testing, this is one of the longest lasting Windows laptops around. |
5 / 5 |
|
Final Score |
It’s not perfect, and had Microsoft flexed some muscle to get a 10-core chip in this laptop without raising its price, it’d truly be the Windows MacBook Air we’ve been waiting for, but it’ll be more than close enough for most people and looks better than anything Apple has put out in years. |
4 / 5 |
Buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch if…
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Also consider
If my Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch review has you looking at other options, here are three other laptops you should consider instead…
How I tested the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch
- I spent about a month with the device
- I used our standard suite of benchmarking tools and performance tests
- I used it as my primary work laptop, including taking it on an international work trip
I spent about a month with the Surface Laptop 13-inch, far longer than I usually spend with a device under review. While this was mostly due to circumstance (Computex and WWDC, in particular), this did allow me to do a much deeper dive.
In addition to my normal benchmarking process, I took extra time to retest some competing laptops we had in the office to come up with a more thorough comparison against the Surface Laptop 13-inch’s competitors.
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John.Loeffler@futurenet.com (John Loeffler)
